Russell Wilson's way winning battles for Seattle

Iain MacIntyre, Vancouver Sun columnist12.14.2012

Quarterback Russell Wilson of the Seattle Seahawks runs out of the pocket against the Arizona Cardinals in the first quarter of their Dec. 9, 2012 National Football League game at CenturyLink Field in Seattle.Kevin Casey
/ Getty Images

Quarterback Russell Wilson of the Seattle Seahawks passes against the Arizona Cardinals at CenturyLink Field on December 9, 2012 in Seattle.Otto Greule Jr
/ Getty Images

SEATTLE — The former minor-league ball player was asked on the day slugger Josh Hamilton signed a $125-million contract with the Los Angeles Angels if he regretted quitting baseball.

“Nah,” Russell Wilson smiled. “I’m glad I’m here.”

Here with the Seattle Seahawks. Here as the rookie starting quarterback on an 8-5 team crackling with possibilities as it travels today to Toronto for Sunday’s National Football League game against the Buffalo Bills.

And yet, Russell Wilson is hard to see.

He is 5-11, which behind the Seahawks’ mammoth offensive line is like a tail behind an elephant. He is hard to see because this is the season of Indianapolis Colt Andrew Luck and Washington Redskin Robert Griffin III, whose Hall-of-Fame candidacies were being measured last April when the quarterbacks were chosen first and second in the draft. Wilson is hard to see because he is a third-round pick — the sixth quarterback chosen and even that was higher than expected — who came quietly to the NFL’s remote Northwest outpost.

But Wilson is getting bigger by the week and so, it seems, is his team. As the Seahawks practised Thursday at their magnificent facility on the shore of Lake Washington, Wilson is already a giant with teammates.

“He has already evolved as one of the leaders of this team,” Seattle receiver Golden Tate said. “I’m very proud of him, but I’m not surprised. I knew this would happen, but I didn’t know when. Did it surprise me how quickly it happened? Yeah, maybe a little. But since Day 1, seeing how he handles himself, the things he does to prepare himself and the team, and his work ethic, it doesn’t surprise me.”

Offensive tackle Russell Okung said: “My first thought: ‘Yo, this guy is short, man.’ I thought he was one of the receivers. But you see how he went out there each day, and how he approached each day, you couldn’t help but give him respect even if he was a rookie. You could tell his craft mattered to him. Right now, we’re seeing some of the benefits of his work.”

While the football cognoscenti obsessed this week over a knee injury to Griffin and whether the NFL’s “it” rookie will play Sunday in Cleveland, Wilson has helped orchestrate four wins in his last five starts and set a rookie quarterback record with a passer efficiency rating above 125 in three straight games.

During that time, he has thrown 10 touchdowns against a single interception and climbed to seventh in the NFL with an over-all passer rating of 94.9, even if he is only 25th in passing yards (2,492) because he hands the ball so often to outstanding running back Marshawn Lynch.

Remember, Wilson was supposed to be the third-string QB, the gifted prospect learning behind Flynn and Tavaris Jackson. Instead, Flynn is earning his $19.5-million contract — $10 million of it guaranteed — on the sidelines and Jackson is in Buffalo.

“I stand for competition to the very highest degree,” Seattle head coach Pete Carroll reiterated for The Vancouver Sun. “For me, it’s not just speak; it’s the central theme in our program. It’s my philosophy in everything we do.

“The (quarterback) competition, if you were really honest and sat back and looked at it, this is what the information was telling us. It was easy to make that decision. But we . . . said: ‘Here, we go, there’s going to be a lot of conventional wisdom roaring at us.’ And we understand that, but this was what we were doing because we really had a conviction about the kid and his abilities.”

Wilson’s father, Harrison Wilson III, was bright enough to attend Dartmouth and become a lawyer, and athletic enough to go to training camp as a receiver with the San Diego Chargers in 1980. His mother, Tammy Wilson, is a legal nurse trained in heart surgery.

Heavily recruited out of high school in Richmond, Va., Russell Wilson played football and baseball at North Carolina State and was a fourth-round Major League draft pick of the Colorado Rockies in 2010, the year his father died after battling diabetes.

Wilson spent his first summer of pro ball across the mountains from Seattle with the Tri-City Dust Devils in Pasco, Wash., the Rockies’ Class-A affiliate in the Northwest League, which includes the Vancouver Canadians. When Wilson announced he would play baseball again in 2011, NC State football coach Tom O’Brien released the quarterback from his scholarship. O’Brien was fired last month.

Wilson transferred to the University of Wisconsin for his senior season, set school records and led the Badgers to the Rose Bowl.

“I always expect greatness and always expect an opportunity,” Wilson told reporters here. “Once I got my opportunity, then I go as far as I can. Continue to grow and continue to have this desire to do great things. The biggest thing is to just keep pushing myself.”

That doesn’t seem to be a problem. He quickly won over Seahawk teammates with his work ethic, his extra hours of preparation, his maturity. Wilson turned 24 in November.

“We’re both from Richmond, Virginia,” veteran fullback Michael Robinson, a Seahawk captain, said. “He used to watch me when I was in high school and he was in elementary school. I remember hearing about him. So his (talent) didn’t surprise me. What did surprise me is how professional he is.

“If you see Russell on Monday, you don’t know if we won or lost. He’s the same guy every day, and that’s what you want to be in this league. You want your team to know what they’re going to get out of you, no matter what. We know what we’re going to get out of Russell every day.”

If you see Russell on Monday, it may be at Seattle Children’s Hospital. He and his wife, Ashton, have been making weekly visits. No cameras, no press releases. They just go.

Russell Wilson is going to be in Seattle a while. He said he is “drastically” better now than when the season began.

“It’s a journey and I respect that process,” he said. “I love this game so, so much. I’d love to play it forever. My goal is to play 12, 15 years. I was talking to my quarterback coach today, like: ‘Coach (Carl) Smith, I don’t see how guys don’t love this game.’ If you don’t love this game, something’s wrong. To be here practising every single day, with this coaching staff and these teammates and this facility, it’s unbelievable. I love it.”

There’s a lot of that going on around the young Seahawks, rebuilt and rebranded by Carroll, the rah-rah college football genius who, like his quarterback, was thought by many to be unsuitable for the NFL.

“I’m watching every step he takes through this thing because I want him to be as successful as he possibly can be,” Carroll said. “He’s an extraordinary individual.”

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